Proliferation of social media puts personalized homepage service iGoogle out to pasture

Google’s personalized homepage service iGoogle was recently shut down after more than eight years of faithful service. The search giant announced plans to shutter the service back in July of last year as the need for it eroded over time, largely due to the proliferation of social media.

In a blog post announcing its closure last year, global enterprise search general manager Matt Eichner pointed out the service was launched back in May of 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today’s web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips.

Given the widespread usage of apps that run on platforms like Android and Chrome, Google decided to wind down the service. Truth be told, iGoogle no longer really fit into the overall Google experience given the fact it wasn’t socially driven like other products such as Android, Google+ and YouTube, just to name a few.

Users were given a full 16 months to adjust and / or export their data if necessary. That time came on November 1 although interestingly enough, Google didn’t give any final warning before closing it. Those visiting the old iGoogle URL will instead be redirected to the search engine’s traditional landing page.

This is the second major Google service to shut down this year. On July 1, the company closed Google Reader as usage reportedly declined over the years. Coincidentally, Reader launched just a few months after iGoogle in 2005.